Friday, October 14, 2016

Friday's Forgotten Books, October 14, 2016

(From the archives)

Charles Benoit is the author of Noble Lives, Relative Danger, and Out of Order

Uncle Dynamite by P.G. Wodehouse

My
favorite fantasy about winning the lottery isn’t having the cash to
travel all around the world or buying some fancy sports car—it is the
blissful knowledge that if I had buckets of the stuff, I’d have a lot
more time for reading.

Not (yet) being a lottery winner and
paparazzi target, I have to seek out books that cram as much good stuff
into one reading as possible, and as a fan of the comic caper novel,
that means lots of phony felonious types, rare and priceless/worthless
objects, setup plans as intricate as an HDTV manual, multiple mistaken
identities, late night crime scene follies, plots that take twists and
turns worthy of the Gordian Knot, and a Criminal Mastermind that’s equal
parts George Clooney, Cary Grant, John Cleese and Steve Martin, with a
heavy dash of a drunken Peter O’Toole. And all of it has to be superbly
written with laugh-out-loud chapters, head-slapping brilliant phrases
and dialog that fizzes like a champagne cocktail.

Given my caper
novel needs, you would assume that I’d make straight for the masterful
works of Donald Westlake and you would be correct. Except we’re talking
forgotten books and no mystery reader worth the title would forget
Westlake. The book I’d like to recommend today has everything you’d
expect to find in the best Westlake caper, but—and I know this sounds
impossible—this one’s even better. It’s Uncle Dynamite, and it’s by the
only author who could out Westlake, Westlake, the inimitable P.G
Wodehouse.

If you know Wodehouse, you can stop reading here and
call it a day. There’s nothing I can say that can add to The Master’s
reputation, and if you don’t know Wodehouse, it’s your loss. But even if
you hold Wodehouse in as high esteem as I do (highly unlikely, but I
throw it out there just to be sporting), and you haven’t read Uncle
Dynamite, well, all I can say is that your quest to discover a meaning
to your life is about to be realized.

Lord Ickeham—the Uncle Fred
of the title—is the sort of whirlwind you can only encounter in the
kind of English clubs where rolls are tossed at the dinner table and
vast sums are wagered on the likelihood that the waiter will trip as he
carries a tray of cocktails across a shaving cream—covered 13th century
Persian carpet. It’s his massive brain that is put to the task of
pinching a plaster bust from a country home, a bust that secretly hides a
cache of jewels, hidden to avoid paying the customs duty. The bust
resides in the stately country home of Sir Aylmer Bostock, a retired
colonial governor who collects ghastly African curios and who once went
by the nickname “Mugsy.” There’s Uncle Fred’s lovesick nephew, Reginald
“Pongo” Twistleton; the lovely Sally Painter, ex-fiancee of said Pongo;
the headstrong Hermione, the current Pongo fiancée; Pongo’s pal, Bill,
who gazes at Hermione in the way young Romeo used to gawk at fair
Juliet; Elsie Been, the straight talking saucy maid who's in love eith
Constable Harold Potter, the very same Constable Harold Potter, who had
once arrested Lord Ickeham and Pongo during a fracas at the dog races,
the self-same dog racing arrest in which Lord Ickeham supplies the false
names of George Robinson and Edwin Smith of 14 and 11 Nasturtium Road,
East Dulwich. When Constable Potter points this inconvenient truth out
to our Lord Ickeham, the peerless peer of the realm simply states that
he is, in fact, Major Brabazon-Plank, noted Brazilian explorer…who just
happens to arrive for an extended stay at Sir Aylmer’s forementioned
country home. And, being a caper novel, there is a bonny baby contest to
be judged.

If this sounds impossibly complicated and preposterously ridiculous, then I have done my job well and admirably.

It
is one sad shortcoming of the modern educational system that Uncle
Dynamite is not required reading in every school in the land, and as a
result, this word-perfect caper novel is seldom read by otherwise
intelligent and well-meaning mystery readers. Track this book down, give
it a read, and if you are not in total agreement that it is indeed, if
not the Greatest Single Work of Fiction Ever Written, it’s still a fun
read.

This post has made me so nostalgic about that time when my sisters and I read Wodehouse all the time and laughed like crazy. It's ages since I picked a book of his but next time I go to the library, I am going to look for this book. Thanks.

SHOT IN DETROIT

CONCRETE ANGEL

And this...

“It is a good rule after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between.” ― C.S. Lewis

Patricia (Patti) Abbott

Contact me

at aa2579@wayne.edu

About Me

Patricia Abbott is the author of more than 125 stories that have appeared online, in print journals and in various anthologies. She is the author of two print novels CONCRETE ANGEL (2015) and SHOT IN DETROIT (2016)(Polis Books). CONCRETE ANGEL was nominated for an Anthony and Macavity Award in 2016.